|
Feudal
relic
In
July the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee issued a report
on the finances of the Duchy of Cornwall which, since feudal times,
has provided a private income for the heir to the throne. A reminder
that the “royal family” not only supply heads of state for UK
Capitalism Inc but are also aristocrats in their own right, with
their own landed estates.
The
thrust of the committee’s report – dominated as the committee is
by New Labour MPs who favour a “modernised” capitalism – was
that Prince Charles was not running the Duchy as a proper capitalist
enterprise. But the Duchy is a landed estate rather than a capitalist
corporation. The aim is still of course to end up with a surplus, but
Charles’ income comes mainly from the rents paid to his estate by
tenant farmers and, increasingly it seems, commercial firms for the
use of the land he has inherited from previous heirs to the throne.
According to the report, the Duchy’s assets at the end of 2004 were
valued at £428 million, most of it land.
England
was the classic country of a landowning class of this type, and
Marx’s mid-19th century analysis of the operation of
capitalism which then still had a large agricultural sector, like
that of Adam Smith and David Ricardo before him, was based on a three
class system: a landowning class renting out its land to capitalist
tenant farmers who employ wage workers. These latter produce surplus
value which is then shared between the capitalist employer as profit
and the landowner as rent.
Ground-rent
is a pure monopoly income which accrues to people who, for accidental
historical reasons, happen to be owners of a portion of the globe;
which allows them to say, even to capitalists, “you can’t use my
land for your farm or your factory or whatever unless you hand over
to me a share of the proceeds”. So landowners are parasites on
parasites. In the 19th century this was a big issue with
capitalist politicians continually raising the “land question”,
but it eventually ended in compromise and intermarriage between
members of the two classes. We can now talk of an essentially two
class system - capitalists and workers - even though ground-rent
remains money for nothing.
Actually,
Charles is also a bit of a capitalist in his own right. He markets
organic food under the label “Duchy Originals” but which,
according to the Times (22 July), “made a profit of £1
million on a turnover of £40 million, which most commercial
enterprises would regard as an inefficient return”. But then, if
you’ve got an income from your private estate of £11.9
million in the tax year 2003-4 (Committee Report) you don’t have to
be so ruthless in your pursuit of any commercial profit as you would
be if this was your only source of income.
But
the New Labour MPs are right. If all capitalist firms took the same
aristocratic attitude to profit-making as Charles, then British
capitalism would be in trouble on world markets. The typical
capitalist firm has to try to maximise its profits, not just to
please its shareholders, but to keep in a fit state to continue to
compete by having funds to invest in means to reduce its costs.
In
the 1860s when Marx was writing Capital the typical capitalist
was still an individual owner who ran his own business or a
partnership of such owners, though this was beginning to change with
the coming of the limited liability company. Marx described the
individual capitalist as “capital personified and endowed with
consciousness and a will” (Volume I, chapter 4). Thus, the
individual capitalist’s greed was not a personal failing but a
reflection of the fact that he personified capital’s need to expand
continuously.
Limited
companies (which Marx did discuss in Volume III of Capital)
are now the dominant form and maximising profits is no longer a mere
personal motivation; it is a legal obligation on those who run
companies. The same applies to pension funds and other so-called
“institutional investors”; the managers and trustees of such
funds are under a legal obligation to maximise the fund’s income or
face a breach of trust charge. Which makes them as ruthless
profit-seekers as any capitalist corporation or 19th
century Gradgrind.
Prince
Charles is just not in this league, but then he’s more of a
personification of landed property.
Page 13 
Page
links
|
Page
1
|
Page
2 |
Page
3 |
Page
4 |
Page
5 |
Page
6 |
Page
7 |
Page
8 |
Page
9 |
Page
10 |
Page
11 |
Page
12 |
Page
13 |
Page
14 |
Page
15 |
Page
16 |
Page
17 |
Page
18 |
Page
19 |
Page
20 |
|
